Merlin's Beard

Allow me to set the scene. I have been dating Randall for about 4 months. When I met him in July, he had a full beard. I thought he was cute, but it did take me a couple times meeting him to get used to the beard. Once I was used to the beard, I was fine with it. I did debate dating him at first over it, because I really could not tell if I could get used to it. How shallow is that??

Anyway, for the first 6-8 weeks of our relationship, he was "Bearded Randall" to me as well as all my friends, because quite honestly, does anyone under the age of 50 really need that much facial hair? In truth, according to him, that is the reason he has the beard, to age himself. Randall turned 29 on December 7. He is a Project Manager for a large national contractor. Most people his age are not trusted with the amount of work or responsibility that he has. While this says a lot about him, it has created problems in the school of hard knocks, as like many things, the construction industry is all about experience and people often have a hard time taking orders from someone with less gray in their hair, thus the beard. Apparently Randall is able to channel Chuck Norris via his beard and can make heads roll via telepathy.


So back to my story. After a month or so of dating Randall, I saw a picture of him in the summer time sans beard. I gasped. He was so cute! I did not understand why I should be dating a lumberjack who wanted to look 40 years old when I could have a tan hottie who looks 29! So the subtal (ahem obvious) hint dropping began. SHAVE YOUR F-ING BEARD!


Around month 2 of our relationship Randall disappeared one night while I was cooking dinner and emerged 15 minutes later clean-shaven. It was a shock. His face had not seen the sun in 8 months and yet again I had to adjust. Well one game of golf fixed that and I have been enjoying a clean-shaved Randall ever since. YAY!

Cute right?? (Please ignore my Blue Steel)

In the mean time, every single person who has known Randall for more than 5 minutes has a comment on the presence (or non-presence) of his facial hair. I am almost as tired of hearing about it as I am the recession and Tiger Woods. It is seriously unbelievable how many people have an opinion and it is especially amazing how rude some people can be. For example, one older "friend" told him that without a beard he looks like a fat-faced twelve-year old. I mean seriously??? How mean is that? Who says that to a person, especially when he looks totally HOT without it?? If someone got a bad hair cut, you wouldn't tell them, "WOW you really look fat!" or "Grow it back now!" Here's a thought: he looks younger than you because he IS younger than you!

Well he is now saying he wants to grow it back, sigh, but I am not dating him for his facial hair so I don't really care. I just thought the world need to know my opinion on my boyfriend's beard.